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Donnerstag, 29. Mai 2014

Trouble at Area 51

The year is 1950, the place is somewhere in the Nevada desert near some small town called Rachel. There is a cosy diner by the roadside of a branch road that leads from highway 375 to a remote military installation by the name of ...
AREA 51
The usual visitors of that fastfood restaurant are off duty guards and scientists from the nearby base and the truckers that deliver supplies and remove waste. Occasional journalists and other curious people also pop in every now and then. 
Tonight there is a female scientist celebrating a major breakthrough at the diner with her aids. She is rumoured to be one of the leading staff of the secret research that is going on at AREA 51. The orange haired geek is said to be her right hand - and maybe more than just that...
The Chinese chef and his wife (in front of the verandah) are very friendly people. Although she does not understand and speak English very well, her husband was grown up in the USA and is a good listener. Soldiers trust him and tell stories when they get drunk, the more so when he grants them a free shot or beer. Scientists tend to talk scientific things mutedly when they feel unattended, but he has good perception. Information about what is going on at AREA 51 has gathered in the back of his brain and he assembled a rather fitting image meanwhile.
There are warning signs along the roadside that is patrolled by army men in Jeeps. However there is no fence and very daring and curious individuals penetrate the forbidding line from time to time - some of them never to be seen again...
It is a calm evening like many others before. The patrons are drinking and eating, there is no fight in the yard and the Chinese chef is expecting good business tonight.
However something is odd outside. The chef and his wife have a look and witness a strange humming coming from across the road. There is an old bleached barn that is long forgotten and of no use anymore. It seems that the sound comes from within that...
The barn: What nobody knows and probably never will know is that the barn was secretly converted into a concealment for a lifting floor. That lift descends to a hidden subterranean tunnel system that was dug a while ago to hide a spacecraft from outer space and keep the existence of aliens on earth a secret. Those aliens are using the tunnels for a mission they seek to accomplish tonight...
Now the efforts of those aliens to keep their existence secret had not been as successful as they believed. Some brave and upright Americans formed a brotherhood of invesigators and decided that this is the night to end the alien intervention on earth.
The spacewomen have reached ground level on their lift and slowly open the door of the barn. They can see the geeky helper of the head of scientific staff right in range of their rayguns. But it is the information inside his brain what they want, not his death.
Ziba-Lon, the raven haired amazon from outer space spots the chief scientist too an approaches her cautiously:
Mister Anderson, the designated leader of the brotherhood called "THE DINER BOYZ", is informed by his sidekick Mister Johnson that the stock car was not there the night before. There is no farm anywhere around, no grass in the desert for cattle to feed and the diner is supplied by trucks which deliver canned or deep freezed food instead of livestock to be butchered on site. "Something strange is goin´ on here" he murmurs to his CIA collegue.
They call on Mister Candy the childish dandy and Mister Tucker the redneck trucker to catch up...
Kika-Mil, another spacegirl and sidekick of Raka-Zor sneaks towards the diner...
Mister Booker the booker and Mister Froebe the hitman join the party.
Ziba-Lon steps out from behind a truck and approaches the geek, because she expects him to be of a weaker mind than his boss. The CIA people and some of their henchmen spot the raven mane and shout out "Venusians!" (where else from would women with rayguns be if you were living in the 1950s?)...
The "Venusian" assembles herself right in front of the small man with big glasses and starts to "interview" him by using her might over his mind. However she is not capable to suck all information at once from the windings of the geeks brain.
The lieutenant of their leader is capable to do so of course - even on the stronger mind of the chief scientist who immediately forgets what she wanted to celebrate tonight, where and who she is and what the orange haired geek had done for her at work and at night...
She talks and talks and spills every little bit of secret information as she obeys to the will of the armed women in seamless stockings.
Raka-Zor the alien commander and Mesa-Mar the red haired firehead come to aid Ziba-Lon who could not persuade the geek yet to reveal all what he knows and what he used to do to please his boss.
Mr. Booker ascents into the cab of a prime mover and tries to start the engine to no avail.
Blond Bera-Bip is destined to "interview" the Chinese chef and approaches him cautiously from the parking lot. A bystanding soldier off duty gets weak knees and looses his ability to talk by her presence.
The CIA coatmen try to shoot the "almost naked" alien women (actually only their arms are unclad, but it´s 1950 remember...), who shoot back green rays from their strange silver rocket shaped weapons, but none of them receives any wounds.
This is the moment the geek surrenders and delivers information about what he knows from the laboratory and mainly what his boss prefers him doing at night...
Raka-Zor whose presence at the interview was enough to make the geek talk to the redhead Mesa-Mar decides to take care of the fat man who tried to start the truck before he could manage to run it over one of her sisters. He is ray-gunned a little bit and lies down on the cab floor cramping in uncontrolled spasms.
Blond Bera-Bip has a very intimidating talk to the chef, much to the annoyance of his wife. However he does not yet reveal the secret recipe of the special homemade barbecue sauce...
Mr. Anderson the CIA agent and leader of THE DINER BOYZ is giving the red head a head shot, which is taking her out and redding her head even more. The "Venusian" does not bleed green even though her garments are of that colour and the brave agent expected her to do so (I did tell you before it´s 1950, didn´t I?)...
The evening has started calmly and without a fight in the yard, but now there is a war going on. Mister Johnson joins his boss next to a black Ford model A standard coupe.
Mr. Candy climbs the roof of the odd stock car to get an overview and perhaps the chance to shoot at anybody in black tights.
Although he sees quite well what is going on below he has to regain breath before he would be able to draw the lady model Derringer from the pocket of his elegant trousers and shoot it.
Too late, Mister Candy! Bera-Bip now knows how to make the best barbecue sauce on earth and how a Chinese sleigh ride really works:

The winning team: A commission of Hydra Miniatures Valkeeri that Michi painted and was allowed to play before he is going to send them across the pond to where they actually belong to.
Due to limited time Doc and Michi agreed on a three plot point game of Pulp Alley which Michi managed to win 3:0 with the loss of one of six players, while Doc´s seven players remained (Mr. Booker has recovered from the ray-gunning by the space amazon leader) with empty hands. It was a fast and fun game that bound us tighter to the Pulp Alley rules and could be the start of a small campaign now that the Americans are aware of the aliens among them...

Dienstag, 6. Mai 2014

Kreuzfahrer

Von Lead Adventure Miniatures kommen diese hervorragenden fünf Fantasyfiguren aus deren Bruegelburg-Reihe: http://www.lead-adventure.com/index.php?cPath=22&osCsid=347508b3d24658655538b9f980d5d007
 Bruegelburg muss wohl irgendwo in der alten Welt von Warhammer angesiedelt sein, denn laut Auskunft des Herstellers liegt es irgendwo in der Gegend von Mordheim. Die Figuren sind sehr deutlich ins 17. Jahrhundert einzuordnen, wenn man sie als historisch betrachten möchte, aber Michi hat eine kleine Auswahl als Kreuzfahrer für das 12. Jahrhundert auserkoren, bei denen der Kleidungsstil einigermaßen unspezifisch für eine bestimmte Epoche ist.


Made by Lead Adventure Miniatures are these excellent five fantasy miniatures from their Bruegelburg range: http://www.lead-adventure.com/index.php?cPath=22&osCsid=347508b3d24658655538b9f980d5d007
Bruegelburg seems to be set in the Old World of Warhammer, because the manufacturer claims it to be somewhere in the Mortheim area. The miniatures are rather obviously settled in the 17th century if one likes to look at them from a historical point of view, but Michi has chose a few whose clothes are relatively unspecific for a certain period and made them 12th century crusaders.